Each cigarette shortens your life by 20 minutes

“If a smoker quits on New Year’s Day, he or she could have saved a whole week of their life by February 20,” the London Department of Health said in the study. By the end of the year, the number of days of life saved will reach 50.

UK data is likely to apply to other countries as well
The information is based on a new evaluation of two long-term studies from Great Britain. The research team took into account more recent data, a longer observation period and more factors than an earlier estimate from 2000. At the time, the lifespan lost from a cigarette was estimated at eleven minutes. But that was based on the assumption that smokers who don’t quit lose an average of 6.5 years of their life expectancy. Now the assumption is ten years for men and eleven years for women.

“These are British data, but you can assume that they also apply to other Western countries,” says the head of the cancer prevention department at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in Heidelberg.

The British government wants to ban the purchase of tobacco
Harm Wienbergen of the Bremen Institute for Cardiovascular Research finds the estimate plausible, but pointed out that there are large individual differences in how harmful a cigarette is. “An important point is certainly the age at which you start smoking.”

80,000 deaths per year
The government in London plans to gradually ban the purchase of tobacco completely. A corresponding law states that people born after January 1, 2009 can never legally purchase tobacco products. Smoking is the leading preventable cause of death in Britain, responsible for 80,000 deaths a year and responsible for a quarter of all cancer cases, government figures show.